Two Velvet Letter Pouches and Their Role in Safavid Diplomacy.

The Designmuseum Danmark in Copenhagen holds two Iranian letter pouches on loan from the Danish National Archives. Sewn from two differently patterned, cut, voided velvets, these pouches are exquisite works of Safavid textile art. They were assumed to carry a letter from Shāh Sulaymān I (r. 1666-1694) that was delivered to King Christian V of Denmark (r. 1670-16gg) in 1691. This article suggests instead that they originally contained two letters from Shāh Şafī I (r. 1629-1642) addressed to Duke Frederick 111 of Schleswig-Holstein-Gottorp (r. 1616-1659), and received by him in 1639. Our proposal is based on handwritten inscriptions in ink on the inner linings of both pouches and a close study of the contents and physical properties of the letters, which are preserved in the Danish National Archives. A contemporaneous travel account of the Gottorp embassy to Isfahan by Adam Olearius and other archival documentation offer further support to this hypothesis. The link to these letters provides a new terminus ante quem for the dating of the velvet fabrics of these pouches to before 1637· By placing the two letter pouches in the context of diplomatic exchange between the Safavid court and a European court, this case study highlights the role luxury textiles played in seventeenth-century Iranian diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]